From: "Thomas R. Corbin" <tc@...>
Date: 2001-12-06T02:44:51+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:27576] Re: Package Naming

David Alan Black wrote:

> Hello --
> 
> On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Thomas R. Corbin wrote:
> 
>> Bryan Murphy wrote:
>>
>> > Now, I don't see why Modules and Namespaces have to behave exactly the
>> > way they do.  Why not something like this?
>> >
>> > module MyXMLConfigModule
>> >   module_alias Text::XML::MyXMLConfigModule
>> >   module_alias XML::Text::MyXMLConfigModule
>> >   module_alias Configuration::Tools::MyXMLConfigModule
>> > end
>> >
>> > require 'Text/XML/MyXMLConfigModule'
>> > works the same as
>> > require 'XML/Text/MyXMLConfigModule'
>> >
>> > ?  It would of course require some changes to Ruby, and some care would
>> > need to be taken on behalf of the module maintainers, but the module
>> > maintainers already do that anyway.  At least those modules that got
>> > into some sort of standard library could be guaranteed to be
>> > consistent.
>> >  You could also do something for your apps like uninstalling
>> > XML::Parsers::REXML, and replacing it with your own library that is
>> > interface compatible and aliases to XML::Parsers::REXML even though it
>> > isn't REXML.
>>
>>         I really like your idea.  It looks like it would add a lot of
>>         flexibility
>> to a system.  Of course, it could be abused, but then so could many
>> things.
>>  I'd love to see your idea in ruby.
> 
> It could certainly be abused.  I'm trying to think of a situation
> where it could just be *used* :-)
> 
> If someone's written a drop-in replacement for REXML (or any other
> large library or application of general interest), it seems to me that
> that person would probably (I hope) want to share the new
> implementation.  That, in turn, would encourage whoever's written the
> program that uses it to modularize their program so that either of the
> two compatible auxiliary libraries could be used.
> 
> Or am I being too Utopian?
> 
> I suppose there may be examples of things like this being done
> usefully, like MooTiff (which installs itself as libXm*), though
> actually I don't think that's the same scenario.

        Well, what I liked was being able to take a complex hierarchy and
simplify it quite a bit.  I would only use something like that internally 
in a project where I'm using a part of a complex hierarchy and it gets 
annoying, or else the hierarchy is way different than I would do it, so
I'd do a sort of internal hierarchy redesign.

        As for the replacing a module - I'm not sure about that, but I suppose I 
might actually take the original module and modify it slightly, either for 
debugging or real particular needs, where I don't think anyone else would 
be interested in my changes.  With this I could get the system to use my 
version of the module.   Of course, AspectR is a useful alternative in a 
lot of cases.

        Not real sure how realistic any of this is, just liking the ideas.


> 
> 
> David
>